Saturday, March 22, 2008

I heart committee 177

Well, if it hasn't been a week of good news mixed in with my sleepless nights of work filled delirium! I am alive and many big things have been happening for me. First:
My Sock It To Me Twice socks swaps socks arrived:
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They are super cute fraternal self patterning socks in all of my favourite colours! I totally love them. My wonderful partner this whole time has been CynicalKnittingGal a.k.a. AJ. Thank you very much AJ! I'm not too sure what the yarn is so perhaps you could let us know? :) Misty also sends her approval. No word from my downstream pal yet so I assume she hasn't received the socks yet. I'll keep you posted!
Next, I got some of the best news I've ever been given and just at the right time when I need that extra bit of motivation to get through what will be a brutal last two weeks of term:

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I *heart* committee 177! I received my NSERC Canadian Graduate Scholarship for my masters degree, woo hoo!!!! I'm all set for grad school. It's worth $17,500 and is renewable for a second year pending continued academic performance and no sudden slashes to the budget. Hooray! You should have seen me jumping up and down and screaming on Thursday when this arrived. The poor kitties were terrified :)
On the knitting front I am almost done one half of the front of the baby bunting so that's well on its way for the due date of early May. Last night I was over at my friend Corey's house for a craft night and decided to make some baby socks from Debbie Bliss' Essential Baby. Now, the troubles just knew no end. I somehow didn't realize the socks were supposed to be knit flat and then seamed down the center of the foot and up the back. So when I started purling on top of knit stitches when the picture clearly was in stockinette I knew that was a sign something was wrong. So I ripped it and decided to modify the sock to knit in the round as I hate seaming and don't think babies really want seams on the bottoms of their feet. I keep knitting, cabled three cables in the wrong direction which results in ripping. Then in the picture, it has the top of the socks rolled over with the pattern facing outward. As I knit them in the round, I suddenly realized several repeats after where you roll it, that my sock would be inside out if rolled. Ripped the extra repeats and decided mine would be an unrolled top so fewer repeats. Did the heel, only it came out funny with all the decreases straight across. So I ripped, started again modifying the heel when I realized that the seam was down the middle so those direction were for only half the heel. Rip back the heel flap to double the number of stitches. This time I modify the heel for the appropriate number of stitches but realize I failed to do the heel flap. Rip again. Knit the heel flap, knit the heel and then the rest of the sock was easy sailing. 5 hours later I had accomplished a single baby sock:
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Now it's a very pretty sock except one thing. I have no idea what planet Debbie Bliss lives on but there's no way these would ever fit a 3-6 month old. And before anyone starts shouting gauge at me, I was getting 6.5 stitches to the inch, the gauge in the pattern was 5.5 stitches to the inch so I was actually knitting at a tighter gauge and came up with smaller socks that the pattern called for (and yes, I took off two stitches to allow for the fact that I eliminated the seam). So, I don't quite know what to do. I will steal a baby at the university on Monday and see how terribly off these are but I'm guessing the answer is... very. *sigh* Do I really need my knits revolting on me right now?

5 comments:

Knitting it Out in an Urban Zoo said...

Oops, I forgot to tell you what the yarn is...Lana Grossa Meilenweit 100 Multijacquard. The colors are so fun! It looks like my third pair of socks are ok (perhaps a little bit on the large size for you though)?

Enjoy, and congrats on Committee 177's decision. Well-deserved I'm sure.

knitting singer said...

Yippeee!!! Congrats Jenna! That sounds like just the thing you need to keep you going for the next few weeks!
The socks are lovely and those colours are very Jenna.
That baby sock is super cute, I hope that it will fit a baby (but remember after you steal the baby to give it back :P)

noricum said...

Congrats! (And remember that kids grow... so they should eventually fit, right?)

Frieda said...

Congratulations on the scholarship Jenna ! Very nice sock swap socks , great colours . The baby sock is adorable , bound to fit at some point.

Montreal Mama said...

That cabled baby sock is soooo cute! 5 hours for 1 baby sock?

So happy for you - for the scholarship! That's amazing news! (Finally catching up on my blog reading!)

Can't wait for you to come to Montreal this June! (Do you know the dates yet?)